The use of new computer languages in the context of web support such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Sun Java and Microsoft common language runtime (CLR) intermedial language, represent new types of workloads that cannot be best supported by compilers that are run on general-purpose, multiple address space (MAS) operating systems. Attempts to design specialized hardware processor cores to accelerate compilation of specific applications and maintain the confidentiality and proprietary nature of these designs are often thwarted because in order to operate with general purpose operating systems, general purpose operating system developers must be provided the details of the specialized hardware processor core. Thus, the confidential and proprietary value of such specialized hardware processor core designs is often lost. Further, the general execution environment cannot exploit non-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) extensions, different Just-in-Time (JIT) compilers, garbage collectors, and other artifacts that may be most efficiently run on specially designed hardware cores.
One approach to address these issues has been to install specialized core processors such as co-processors developed by third-party chipmakers that can be dropped into a coherent hyper-threading (HT) socket. Such co-processors are designed to begin working gluelessly with the other processors in the system. For example, a Java+XML accelerator co-processor may be installed into one socket of a multi-processor system. Such a configuration could be used with a datacenter web server having, a general processor in one socket and a Java+XML coprocessor in another socket. However, such solutions still require the interface with general operating systems and, thus, do not fully use the optimization of a processor core design because the specialized core is limited by the general operating system.